"Stickler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... extra tanks. You're both old heads at lone wolf tactics. I'm beginning to think we have too much handling out of the control room." He bent forward and his smile faded. "But, remember this, I'm under a general who's a stickler for ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... suitors, she has never been tempted to venture again into the happy state. This is singular, too, for she seems of a most soft and susceptible heart; is always talking of love and connubial felicity, and is a great stickler for old-fashioned gallantry, devoted attentions, and eternal constancy, on the part of the gentlemen. She lives, however, after her own taste. Her house, I am told, must have been built and furnished about the time of Sir Charles Grandison: every thing about it is somewhat ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... to be a very great stickler for the law and held it in high respect—so he always declared—and reckoned that those who put themselves within the reach of it deserved all they got. He might say doubtful things to Joseph Ford's ear now ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... waiting again for me. He was a small, but keen-witted man called Jeremy Stickler, and I liked his company. He now came upon a graver business than conducting me to London. He held a royal commission to raise the train-bands of Somerset and Devon, and he brought a few troops with him, and made our farm his headquarters. He had been sent in hot haste by Chief Justice ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... arpents, one perch, seven feet eight inches, and four eighths of an inch," from which description one would infer the Major had surveyed his domain with great minuteness, or that he must have been rather a stickler for territorial rights. What would his shades now think could they be made cognizant of the fact that that very chateau garden, [269] which he possessed and bequeathed to his sons in the year 1800, which had been taken possession of for military purposes by the Imperial authorities, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... is a stickler for monarchy, not altogether as a pensioner, if he is one, which I believe, but as a political man. He has taken up a contemptible opinion of mankind, who, in their turn, are taking up the same of him. He considers them as a herd of beings that must be governed by fraud, effigy, and show; and ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... and a stickler for precision and uniformity, Rosas sought to govern a nation in the rough-and-ready fashion of the stock farm. A creature of his environment, no better and no worse than his associates, but only more capable than they, and absolutely convinced that pitiless autocracy ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... should be a very interesting thing to hand down to one's children. The trouble is, I like to write a few personal things in this blessed old book that might not be exactly what I'd want my children to read. I feel that I shall be a far greater stickler for propriety in regard to them than ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... fingers of such of the Roman nobility as had fallen in the battle of Cannae. He concluded with demanding money, provisions, and fresh troops. All the spectators were struck with an extraordinary joy; upon which Imilcon, a great stickler for Hannibal, fancying he had now a fair opportunity to insult Hanno, the chief of the contrary faction, asked him, whether he was still dissatisfied with the war they were carrying on against the Romans, and was for having Hannibal delivered up to them? Hanno, without discovering ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... may happen to us," returned Bowse, who was a great stickler for the honour of the navy, and did not at all relish the colonel's observations. "I've done my best to please you, and I'm sure the officers of any of his Majesty's ships would have done the same. I've belonged myself to the service, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... the superstructure. He maintained, according to Godwin,[136] that the best of all governments had been that of England under George I. Though Cartwright said at the trial that Horne Tooke was taken to 'have no religion whatever,' he was, according to Stephens, 'a great stickler for the church of England': and stood up for the House of Lords as well as the church on grounds of utility.[137] He always ridiculed Paine and the doctrine of abstract rights,[138] and told Cartwright that though all men had an equal right to a share ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... looked, and, as the distance increased, sprang on to the side, and, his eyes dim with emotion, waved tender farewells. If it had not been for the presence of the skipper—a tremendous stickler for decorum—he would have ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... despite the health-preserving air of Mudfog, the Mayor died. It was a most extraordinary circumstance; he had lived in Mudfog for eighty-five years. The corporation didn't understand it at all; indeed it was with great difficulty that one old gentleman, who was a great stickler for forms, was dissuaded from proposing a vote of censure on such unaccountable conduct. Strange as it was, however, die he did, without taking the slightest notice of the corporation; and the corporation were imperatively ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... is derived from the Greek, and applied to Theramenes, who was at first a mighty stickler for the thirty tyrants' authority: but when they began to abuse it by defending such outrageous practices, no man more violently opposed it than he; and this (says Potter) got him the nick-name of "Jack ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... a very moderate amount of spare time, and that at uncertain intervals, to devote to this seductive pursuit, I am always a great stickler for economy of time in all the processes, as well as for economy of material, the former with me having, perhaps, a shade ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... disarmed Bob's anger. Mart was watching the four men anxiously. Their attitude puzzled him, for the seamen were undoubtedly insolent, but Jerry seemed to pay no attention; and the old quartermaster was usually a stickler for ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... kind of girl. If she is one of your high-steppers as to dignity and sense of honor, let him play mean and seem to do a few dirty tricks. If she's a stickler for manners and good taste, let him betray a few traits of boorishness or Philistinism; or if she has a keen sense of the ridiculous, let him make an ass of himself. I should say the last would be the ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... the unanimity was emphasised rather than disturbed by a little handful of cranks, calling themselves "Protestant Home Rulers," who met on the 24th of October at the village of Ballymoney "to protest against the lawless policy of Carsonism." The principal stickler for propriety of conduct in public life on this occasion ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... night o'erspreads the earth And, stickler-like, the armies separates. My half-supp'd sword, that frankly would have fed, Pleas'd with this dainty bait, thus goes ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... alternative whether A., in whom the right was, or B., to whom Mr. Murphy, by the means aforesaid, had transferred it, succeeded in an action; we mention this particular, because, as this brother attorney was a very violent party man, and a professed stickler for the public, to suffer any injury to have been done to that, would have been highly ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... heavy-jawed, with a strong step, and a short manner; obviously proud, reserved, silent, slightly imperious, self-centred, self-opinionated, well-educated in the kind of knowledge all such men must possess, but narrow in intellect, retrograde in sympathy, a stickler for social conventions, an almost unyielding upholder of royal rights, prerogatives, customs, and usages (although by his own marriage he had violated one of the first of the laws of his class, and by his unfailing ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... manner of his own. He was a stickler for getting down to the very heart of things, for prodding around among causes until he found the cause itself. And thus he learned the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... but he is a man of very rigid principles and a great stickler in regard to any matters pertaining to the interests and duties of his office. Were I to divulge—as, I confess, my pen is itching to do—the dazzling—I will even say blinding—contents of these other grim compartments (particularly ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... such a visitor as he should be sent to the head of the institution. But he refused to take the hint, and indicated that he expected me to arrange the whole matter for him. This I did by going to the observatory and frankly explaining the matter to Admiral Davis. Happily the latter was not a stickler for official forms, and was cast in too large a mould to take offense where none was intended. At his invitation I acted as one of the receiving party. The carriage drove up at the appointed hour, and its ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... "come and inquire how my health is after dancing all night. Etiquette demands that much, and I'm a great stickler ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... one. Wait. He'll be wantin' to get out in a year or two. Say nothin' to her aither. Talkin' won't help there. She'll come to her sinses when he's been away long enough, I'm thinkin'." Owen had tried to be civil to his sister after that, but since he was a stickler for social perfection and advancement, and so eager to get up in the world himself, he could not understand how she could possibly have done any such thing. He resented bitterly the stumbling-block she had put in his path. Now, among other things, his ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... the unreasonableness of an Husband, or the severity of a Parent, that would debar the Sex from such innocent Liberties. Your Salamander is therefore a perpetual Declaimer against Jealousie, and Admirer of the French Good-breeding, and a great Stickler for Freedom in Conversation. In short, the Salamander lives in an invincible State of Simplicity and Innocence: Her Constitution is preserv'd in a kind of natural Frost; she wonders what People mean by Temptation; and defies Mankind to do their worst. Her Chastity is engaged in a ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... half rises)—very much indeed. (If he meant to say more he checks himself. He looks at his plate.) No more, thank you. (The simple island meal is ended, save for the walnuts and the wine, and CRICHTON is too busy a man to linger long over them. But he is a stickler for etiquette, end the table is cleared charmingly, though with dispatch, before they are placed before him. LADY MARY is an artist with the crumb-brush, and there are few arts more delightful to watch. Dusk has come sharply, and she turns on the electric light. It ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... single file. At Cubat's I hated to leave the companion-officers of my friend at the door, so I invited them in, too. They accepted, naturally. But the subalterns were thirsty as well. I understand discipline. You know, Feodor Feodorovitch, that I am a stickler for discipline. Just because one is gay of a spring morning, discipline should not be forgotten. I invited the officers to drink in a private room, and sent the subalterns into the main hall of the ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... issue of a "proof" newspaper; like the show, it must go on! The Department of the Interior running our public lands saw to that. Friday's paper might come out the following Monday or Wednesday, but it must come out. That word "consecutive" in the proof law was an awful stickler. But everyone who had hung around the print shop watching Myrtle work, took ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... of introducing his companion. Personally, he would as readily have performed this office on horseback, but he knew that the schoolmaster was a stickler for ceremony. While the introduction was going on, Pierre took Mr. Nash's horse by the bridle, and led the procession home. There, Madame stood in the porch eagerly waiting for news of "ce jeune homme si courageux, si benveillont," and was delighted to hear that he was safe, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... thing, and the reasonableness of the demand for a change. There is a very good bust of Chaucer, with a cap on, and there is a still more excellent bust of Lorenzo de Medici, which has also a cap; but we put the question to the most conservative of hatters, and to the greatest stickler for the etatus quo in head attire, whether he would tolerate the marble or bronze portraiture of either of those worthies with the modern hat upon its head? The idea is so preposterous, that, if fairly considered, it would make converts of the most obstinate sticklers ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... had won him a wife with a fortune only a little later. The fortune had warranted a short leave abroad this very year. (He would not have taken a day over sixty, for fear of losing his light battery.) He had been a stickler for gauntlets on all mounted duty when he went away, and he came home converted to white wash-leather gloves because the British horse-artillery wore no other, "and they, sir, are the nattiest in the world." He could not tolerate an officer whose soul was not aflame with ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... had no intention, in the present case, of practically asserting,—as Frederic in his politic wrath said he did,—the feudal superiority in question. The English pope, however, was not the less a stickler for that superiority in theory, as well as Cardinal Roland and the rest of the hierarchy;—a superiority which Pope Gregory VII. supported by the feelings and convictions of Christendom at his day, taught as follows: that the ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... rooms of Casa Grande. Then Poppsy—I beg her ladyship's pardon, for I mean, of course, Pauline Augusta—has to duly inspect her dolls to assure herself that they are both well-behaved and spotless as to apparel, for Pauline Augusta is a stickler as to decorum and cleanliness; and Dinkie falls to working on his air-ship, which he is this time making quite independent of Whinnie, whose last creation along that line betrayed a disheartening disability for flight. But even this ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... a severe military critic, he was never an unjust one, neither did he spare his own men. Though not a martinet, which was foreign to every fibre of his nature, he was a stickler for rigid discipline. When the expedition was recalled, he was first quartered in Norwich, and then at the old familiar barracks of St. Helier, in Jersey. On his return to the latter place, in 1800, after leave of absence, he found that the junior lieutenant-colonel ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... the same policy in book purchase, although, as has been said, their various policies are always compounded of different proportions of these two factors,—regard for the wishes and demands of their users, and consideration of what is right and proper for those users, from whatever standpoint. The stickler for uniformity will lament this diversity, but it is probably a good thing. In many libraries, there are as many minds as there are men, and it cannot be and ought not to ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... I should meet officers at the ball who would gladly present me to the lady. I should be compelled to attend in field uniform, yet circumstances would excuse that, and what little I had seen of her convinced me she was no stickler for conventionality. The duty soldier was more apt to interest such a personality than any dandy on dress parade. With a word I dismissed my companion, and turned in to the camp of the Yagers, sure of a welcome at ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... rigour, so intolerable to laymen, so irritating to Protestants, could not shake his popularity. We shall best conceive him by examples nearer home; we may all have known some divine of the old school in Scotland, a literal Sabbatarian, a stickler for the letter of the law, who was yet in private modest, innocent, genial, and mirthful. Much such a man, it seems, was Father Dordillon. And his popularity bore a test yet stronger. He had the name, and probably ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "despite of that discomfiture, there was nothing in the conduct of those engaged that should call a blush into the cheek of the most fastidious stickler for national glory. There is not an officer here present," he continued, "who is not prepared to attest with myself, that your column in particular behaved like heroes. By the way, I could wish to ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... on this coming off, for I knew what a stickler Simon was for the respectable and the conventional and all that. Can't you see the two of us going through the streets together, five yards apart and dressed exactly alike! Wouldn't the small boys have liked it! That was my only idea in coming down here. I meant no more mischief, I'll swear to ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... "Exactly. Well, then, Warlock, Wrangler. Wrangler, Warlock. And now the formalities have been observed. I don't know how it is with you, Warlock, but I'm a great stickler for the formalities. 'Pon my life, I consider them the web upon which the social fabric hangs together. They're not to be dispensed with upon any account whatever. While I was abroad recently, the American Minister and I were walking along the Mall together. 'Ah,' he suddenly said, 'My dear Wrangler, ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... high-class Picturedrome. True that the local dentist, who is a stickler for correct English, protests against the designation. I have pointed out to him that if a "Hippodrome" is a place where one sees performing hippos, then surely a place where one sees performing pictures is correctly styled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... You will have a bungalow to yourself," continued McClintock, "and your morning meal will be your own affair. But luncheon and dinners you will sit at my table. I'm a stickler about clothes and clean chins. How you dress when you're loafing will be no concern of mine; but fresh twill or Shantung, when you dine with me, collar and tie. If you like books and music, we'll ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... me," said Dan'l, "but I never shall be able to respect that judge. My opinion of a judge is, he should be like a stickler and see fair play; but this here chap took sides against Hughie from the first. If I was you," he said, "I wouldn't trust him with ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... mounted the stairs and entered the front room overhead. He was there, of course, to arrange his toilet. He was a stickler for handsome clothes, spotless linen and the ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... him lessons. It would have been unlike Sir ————, who was open-hearted but close-fisted, to give anything else. But the boy contrived to support his mother and sister. That fellow, who is now as arrogant a stickler for the dignity of art as you or my Lord Chancellor may be for that of the bar, stooped then to deal clandestinely with fancy shops, and imitate Watteau on fans. I have two hand-screens that he painted for a shop in Rathbone Place. I suppose he may have got ten shillings for them, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... vice dominus to lead his forces in the field—is an old-school country gentleman who is amiably at odds with modern times. While tolerant of those who have yielded to the new order, he himself is a great stickler for the preservation of antique forms and ceremonies: sometimes, indeed, pushing his fancies to lengths that fairly would lay him open to the charge of whimsicality, were not even the most extravagant of his crotchets touched and mellowed by his natural goodness of heart. In the earlier ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... which beset such liberty of option were obvious, and the opponents of the bill did not fail to make the most of them. It was a subject which specially suited the satirical pen and declamatory powers of Dr. South. He was a great stickler for uniformity; unity, he urged, was strength; and therefore he insisted upon 'a resolution to keep all the constitutions of the Church, the parts of the service, and the conditions of its communion entire, without lopping off any part of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... admiralty, and chancery were put in commission; twelve able judges were chosen;* and the diocese of Salisbury being vacated by the death of Dr. Ward, the king of his own free motion filled it with Burnet, who had been a zealous stickler for his interest; and in a particular manner instrumental in effecting the revolution. Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, refused to consecrate this ecclesiastic, though the reasons of his refusal are not specified; but, being afraid of incurring the penalties of a premunire, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... was something of an anachronism, and had as lofty a disregard for convention as had the ladies thronging the Court of Merlin. Nor, it must be admitted, was she herself any pronounced stickler for exactitude. Thus, she lopped half a dozen years off her age, allotted her father (whom she dubbed a "Spanish officer of distinction") a couple of brevet steps in rank, and insisted on an ancestry to ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... instances of artists I will add others of celebrated authors. Muretus rendered Joseph Scaliger, a great stickler for the ancients, highly ridiculous by an artifice which he practised. He sent some verses which he pretended were copied from an old manuscript. The verses were excellent, and Scaliger was credulous. After having read them, he exclaimed they were admirable, and affirmed that ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... or flat Conversations of his father) breathed the alien air of authorship. If not the daughter, nor even the niece, she was, if I am not mistaken, the second cousin of a hundred earls and a great stickler for relationship, so that she had other views for her brilliant child, especially after her quiet one (such had been her original discreet forecast of the producer of eighty volumes) became the second wife of an ex-army-surgeon, already the father of four ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... most intimate relations to him. What a story that is which he has given to us of a great soul—faithful always in the greatest? Yes, but no less faithful in the least. There seems a strange, almost grotesque impossibility in the thought that such an one should ever have come to be regarded as "a stickler for ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... night he confessed his sins, and they edified me not a little. On the second he was well enough to sit up and swear, and to vow that Miss Swain was an angel; that he would marry her the very next week and his father Grafton were not such a stickler for family. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... When Captain Jensen, the wildest of the Blackbirders though descended from old New York Knickerbocker stock, surged in, clad in loin-cloth, undershirt, two belted revolvers and a sheath-knife, he was stopped at the beach. This was in the days of Johnny Bassett, ever a stickler in matters of etiquette. Captain Jensen stood up in the sternsheets of his whaleboat and denied the existence of pants on his schooner. Also, he affirmed his intention of coming ashore. They of Goboto nursed him back to health ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... little woman," reiterated Mr. Latz, rather riveting even Mrs. Samstag's suspicion that here was no great stickler for ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... bigotry, intolerance, dogmatism; opiniatry^, opiniativeness; fixed idea &c (prejudgment) 481; fanaticism, zealotry, infatuation, monomania; opinionatedness opinionativeness^. mule; opinionist^, opinionatist^, opiniator^, opinator^; stickler, dogmatist; bigot; zealot, enthusiast, fanatic. V. be obstinate &c adj.; stickle, take no denial, fly in the face of facts; opinionate, be wedded to an opinion, hug a belief; have one's own way &c (will) 600; persist ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... addressing the Prince, "you will forgive an old campaigner for being a stickler for the rules and procedures of military operations. An inn-yard, with soldiery around and townsfolk gaping through doors and windows, is no place for a council of war. The gentleman is pleased to dream, of birds, as I gather. Let him back to the ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... was a great stickler for the old English customs, and always had the yule-log brought in with great ceremony. With his own hands he suspended the mistletoe from the chandelier in the hall, which he always obtained from Dimmerly Manor in England. Lottie, ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... well known and a matter of public faith, that her grandfather, the great miller and baker, Lord Lardy-Cake, as the boys called him derisively, had literally bushels upon bushels of money. He was a famous stickler for ancient usages, and it was understood that there were twenty thousand spade guineas in an iron box under his bed. Any cottager in the whole country side could have told you so, and would have smiled at your ignorance; the thing was as well known as that ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... a comin' to see the likes o' me," said the patient, flushing with satisfaction. "You'm like the stickler at a wras'lin' match, Mister Tregenza, sir; you sees fair play ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... far these views are compatible, the reader will judge. And it is hoped he will excuse the length of the extracts, from a consideration of the fact, that a great master of the "pen-craft" here ridiculed, a noted stickler for needless Kays and Ues, now commonly rejected, while he boasts that his grammar, which he mostly copied from Murray's, is teaching the old explanation of the alphabetic elements to "more than one hundred thousand children ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... had once lived next to Mrs. Carter and had a difference about some hens that strayed away to lay. Harricutt likely had him all primed. Jones, Gibson, Harricutt—three against three. Joyce's vote would decide it. Joyce was a new man, owner of the canneries. He was a great stickler for proprieties, yet he seemed to feel that a minister's word was law—Well—! God ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... is not more blessed to be right than to be loved, Henry Clay's remark that he would rather be right than president notwithstanding. The absolute perfectionist is the most tiresome of men, and a waster of time and of nerves. The stickler, the fly-speckler, the bully and the sadist serve only to encumber those parts of the establishment which they touch; their subordinates spend part of their own strength clearing away the wreckage which these ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... gone back to Eton, but he had teased and prayed to be allowed to "see the fun out," meaning the election. "And that devil's discomfiture when he finds himself beaten," he surreptitiously added, behind his father's back, who was a great stickler for the boy's always being "gentlemanly." So the earl had yielded. They arrived, as before, about breakfast-time, having traveled all night. Subsequently, they and Mr. Carlyle walked ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Vernon, where his remains now lie, near those of his illustrious uncle, George Washington. He was a small, insignificant-looking man, deprived of the sight of one eye by excessive study, negligent of dress, and an immoderate snuff-taker. He was a rigid disciplinarian and a great stickler for etiquette, and on one occasion he sat for sixteen hours without leaving the bench. He was also a man ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... such a thing in open court. Such utterances he reserved for his cronies and confidants. Once he was under the dented tin dome where he sat for so many years he became so firm a stickler for the forms and the dignities that practically a sacerdotal air was imparted to the proceedings. As you might say, he was almost high church in his adherence to the ritualisms. Lawyers coming before him did not practice the law in their shirt sleeves. They might do this ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... been heard. Slowly, sleepily, at the gruff summons of their sergeants, the troopers were crawling out of their blankets and stretching and yawning by the fires. No stirring trumpet-call had roused them from their dreams. A stickler for style and ceremony was the major in garrison, but out on Indian campaign he was "horse sense from the ground up," as his veterans put it. He observed all formalities when on ordinary march, and none whatever when in ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... some palace function with paste buckles on his shoes, instead of silver ones. The pretext was well chosen, inasmuch as the tyrant added to his other vices and absurdities the pose of being an extravagant stickler for etiquette. We happen to know, nevertheless, that the name of a young dancer, a prime favourite at Court, cropped up persistently at the time in connection with this malodorous but ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... bitter stanzas were written on the death of Sheridan. There is a curious circumstance connected with them; they were sent to Perry, the well-known editor of the Morning Chronicle. Perry, though no stickler in a general way, was staggered at the venom of two stanzas, to which I need not more particularly allude, and wrote to inquire whether he might be permitted to omit them. The reply which he received was shortly this: "You may insert ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... part of the voyage, considering him indolent and inactive; and probably thought his present repugnance arose from a want of true nautical spirit. The interference of the partners in the business of the ship, also, was not calculated to have a favorable effect on a stickler for authority like himself, especially in his actual state of feeling ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... contemptible for their weakness, appeared to her as better than barn-door fowl, or vermin in their multitudes gnawing to get at the cheese-trap. She could be humane, even sisterly, with women whose conduct or prattle did not outrage plain sense, just as the stickler for the privileges of her class was large-heartedly charitable to the classes flowing in oily orderliness round about below it—if they did so flow. Unable to read woman's character, except upon ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Great Portland Street for a house in Pimlico, where there was a larger studio (workshop, as she preferred to call it), hung about with her own and other people's designs. The artist of the poster was full as ever of vitality and of good-nature, but her humour had not quite the old spice; a stickler for decorum would have said that she was decidedly improved, that she had grown more womanly; and something of this change appeared also in her work, which tended now to the graceful rather than the grotesque. She received her ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... you come to the servants' entrance?" said Charolais, with the truculent air of the servant of a duke and a stickler for his ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... passed unobserved by us, had we not in coming to anchor swung between her moorings and the Machina wharf. Not that it made any serious difference, Gates explained, nor were we impertinently near, but it just missed being the scrupulously polite thing to have done—and Gates was a stickler on matters of yacht etiquette. So he felt uncomfortable about it, while at the same time being reluctant to hoist anchor and foul our decks with the bottom of Havana Bay. To be on the safe side he determined ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... heel than when we saw it first. There have been few changes—the few that have occurred having arrived unheralded and hence have remained undiscovered. For instance, it is not generally known that Mrs. Pennycook has lost control of her husband. Yet, such is the fact. She is still a great stickler for principle, but she trembles if her husband looks at her. It appears that Dan Pennycook's half-hearted accusation of Miss Pickett as the author of the anonymous note found on the body of Boras O'Rourke preyed on the spinster's mind, and when Bob McGraw started ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... Brutus found him in 43, when attending philosophical lectures in order to hide his political intrigues; and though Horace was a freedman's son, Brutus gave him the high dignity of a military tribuneship. Brutus as a Republican was, of course, a stickler for all the aristocratic customs. That he conferred upon Horace a knight's office probably indicates that the libertinus pater had been a war captive rather than a man of servile stock, and, therefore, only technically a ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... was a facer. It never occurred to any of us—eh?—that this island might have an owner. To tell the truth, I'm a stickler for the rights of property, at home; but somehow the notion of an island like this belonging to any one had never entered my head. Yet the thing is reasonable enough when you come to think it over; and, of course, I saw that it put an entirely different complexion ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... all the waste of smouldering hate—some one surely to be wept over and made much of and caressed. The poor old hag recovered consciousness with her head pillowed on a European lap, and Duncan McClean—no stickler for convention and no believer in a line too tightly drawn—saw fit to remonstrate as he laid the jar of water down ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... can for the money he gets for the job. In the instance given above, of the escapement with nine degrees of lever action, when the fork worked all right, if we undertook to give the fork the ten degrees demanded by the stickler for accuracy we would have to set out the jewel pin or lengthen the fork, and to do either would require more time than it would to bring the pallets to conform to the fork and roller action. It is just this knowing how and the decision to act ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... Hackney-School. And when grown up to Marriageable years I wanted not for store of Sweethearts, and some of them of very good Estates: and yet my Father thought none good enough. But he being one that was a great and zealous Stickler for the Parliament in opposition to the King, and thinking that Charles Stuart (as then they call'd King Charles the Second), would never be Restor'd, laid out his Money in Purchasing of Crown-Lands, having (as he thought) got a mighty Peniworth: But Oliver being dead, and ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... he is certainly no stickler for high-flown notions. I should be right glad if we understood each other. And how far are ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... up, startled and amazed beyond measure. He did not at all take in my meaning, but he was very sensible of my rudeness. My uncle was ever the most amiable of men and the most tolerant, but for correctness of deportment and elegance of manner he was a stickler, and so flagrant a breach of both was ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... known in her day as they have been since," said Joan; "only the first leaves, so to speak, were above the soil: but so far as I can judge from what I know, I should say, not so. She was a great stickler for old ways and the authority ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... to cook," he announced, with the most engaging simplicity. "We both stand in need of refreshment before we return to the serious business of our interview. You see me in my cook's dress; forgive it. There is a form in these things. I am a great stickler for forms. I have been taking some wine. Please sanction that proceeding by taking ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... of that proof rests on the petitioner. Because a case is undefended, it doesn't for one single shadow of a chance follow that the petitioner's plea is therefore going to be granted. No. The Divorce Court may be cynical, but it's a stickler for proof. The Divorce Court says to the petitioner, 'It's up to you. Prove it. Never mind what the other side isn't here to deny. What you've got to do is to satisfy me, to prove to me that ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... colourless, the lines about them being numerous and strongly marked. Had I seen him under ordinary circumstances, I should have set him down as a little-minded man; a small tyrant in his own way over those dependent on him; a pompous parasite to those above him—a great stickler for the conventional respectabilities of life, and a great believer in his own infallibility. But he was Margaret's father; and I was determined to be pleased ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... property institutions, and a determination, if possible, to subvert them. Of the two, the charge of Agrarianism is the more serious, as it implies the other. A man may be irreligious, and yet a great stickler for property, because a great owner of it,—or because he is by nature stanchly conservative, and his infidelity merely a matter of logic. But if there be any reason for charging a man with Agrarianism, though it be never so unreasonable a reason, his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... Johnson, Mt. Savage, Md., writes: "For the speedy cure of sudden Colds, and for the relief of children afflicted with Croup, I have never found anything equal to Ayer's Cherry Pectoral. It is the most potent of all the remedies I have ever used." W. H. Stickler, Terre Haute, Ind., writes: "Ayer's Cherry Pectoral cured my wife of a severe lung affection, supposed to be Quick Consumption. We now regard the Pectoral as a household necessity." E. M. Breckenridge, Brainerd, Minn., writes: ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 02, February, 1885 • Various
... may run down larnin' if yiz like," said the undismayed stickler for theory versus practice, "but larnin' is a fine thing, and sure where would the world be at all only for it, sure where would the staymers (steamboats) be, only ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... as Sir Thomas Browne quaintly phrases it, "to the deuteroscophie or second sight of thinges"—these analogies may appear conclusive; but we trust to be able to show, that between these two great men there exists a difference wide and marked enough to satisfy the most critical stickler for originality. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... other youngsters in the place,—Punch walked solemnly up the aisle and stood behind them, with slow-swinging tail and a look of anticipation on his gravely interested face, while outside, Scamp, in the hands of some enterprising stickler for forms and ceremonies, rent the air ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... me to them," corrected the old dame, who was a stickler for etiquette. "They are genuine Princesses, are ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... of the late Mr. J. A. Doyle, as a writer, breeder, judge, or exhibitor of Fox-terriers. Whilst breeding largely from his own stock, he was ever on the look-out for a likely outcross. He laid great store on terrier character, and was a stickler for good coats; a point much neglected in the ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... independently, the results agreeing within ten seconds of longitude, or a difference of only a few hundred feet. This, of course, was quite near enough for all practical purposes, but it did not completely satisfy either of us, Mrs Vansittart being, like myself, something of a stickler for absolute accuracy. We therefore tried again, this time working the problem of "equal altitudes", and before the day was out we had arrived at identical results, both as to latitude ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... knew all the bearings of a commercial man thoroughly, and could have put one together if he were only supplied with a little bit—say the mouth, as Professor Owen always does with the Dodoes. Mr. Moulder now began to be angry, for he was a stickler for the rights and privileges of his class, and had an idea that the world was not so conservative in that respect as it should be. Mr. Dockwrath, however, was not to be frightened, so he drew his chair a thought nearer to the fire, took a sup of brandy and water, and prepared ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... is no stickler for principles," Folco said, sourly; "he cares for no laws that he can break. But in this case he claims to be acting according to his right, since the breaking of ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... about telling you apart. She's sweet and gay and loving and I suppose we've all spoiled her. Aunt Kate thinks she's the loveliest thing in the world, and she has just devoted her life to the child. Aunt Kate is as good as gold, a stickler for some things and she's always been splendid to mother. But she's great on family. She can't cry you down, because you belong ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... was a great stickler for the truth of all sorts of prophecies, gives a much more favourable account of this Peter of Pomfret, or Pontefract, whose fate he would, in all probability, have shared, if he had had the misfortune to have flourished in the same age. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... to the "Autobiography," the self-confession which we find is this: An old-maidish personage, inhabiting boarding-houses, equable and lukewarm in all his tastes and passions, having no desultory curiosity, showing little interest in either books or people. A petty fault-finder and stickler for trifles, devoid in youth of any wide designs on life, fond only of the more mechanical side of things, yet drifting as it were involuntarily into the possession of a world-formula which by dint of his extraordinary pertinacity he proceeded ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... among the very latest portions of Proverbs. For it is in the highest degree probable that the sayings of Agur are of a much later date even than the promulgation of the Priests' Code;[192] and the circumstance that the anonymous stickler for strict orthodoxy already begins to accentuate the political and religious opposition between the two great parties known as Pharisees and Sadducees, as well as other grounds of a different order, disposes me ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... preserved; so the postmark, when legible, has filled the lacuna. At every turn in his life we are reminded of his inexactitude—especially in autobiographical details. And yet, too, like most inexact men, he was a rare stickler for certain niceties. He would have defended the "h" in Meccah with his sword; and the man who spelt "Gypsy" with an "i" for ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... had been necessary for Archie to drape his reluctant form in a two-piece bathing suit of a vivid lemon colour; for he was supposed to be representing one of those jolly dogs belonging to the best families who dive off floats at exclusive seashore resorts. J. B. Wheeler, a stickler for accuracy, had wanted him to remove his socks and shoes; but there Archie had stood firm. He was willing to make an ass of himself, but ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... was an obsession of his in any case. He had loathed her mother, who dared try to wear down the rule that women must be veiled. Even his own dancing girls were heavily veiled in public, and all his relations with women of any sort took place behind impenetrable screens. He was a stickler for that sort of thing and, like others of his kidney, rather proud of the rumors that no curtains could confine. So he loathed and despised Yasmini even more than he had detested her mother, because she coupled to her mother's Western notions about freedom a wholly Eastern ability to take ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... be here, lug and luggage," predicted Leila with a groan. "It is the way they treated you that would have counted against them. Our president is a stickler for honor. He might readily expel them for that ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... great renown in the country, was composed of about forty dogs, all branded upon their right thighs with the Bergenheim coat-of-arms. From time immemorial, the chateau's dogs had been branded thus with their master's crest, and Christian, who was a great stickler for old customs, had taken care not to drop this one. This feudal sign had probably acted upon the morals of the pack, for it was impossible to find, within twenty leagues, a collection of more snarly terriers, dissolute hounds, ugly bloodhounds, or more quarrelsome greyhounds. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... kindly to projects which tend to a better equalization of duties, responsibilities, and pleasures. He will be a great stickler for this; if he has to work, every one else must work too. He will be hard against special privileges. He will be strong in his insistence that our natural resources be nationalized. He will go after all lines of industry now in ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... moreover, one Mr. Feeling, but he was no captain, but a great stickler to encourage Mansoul to rebellion, he received a wound in the eye by the hand of one of Boanerges' soldiers, and had by the captain himself been slain, but that he made ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... will, the principles of Arius begin to revive, not only in England, but in Holland and Poland. The celebrated Sir Isaac Newton honoured this opinion so far as to countenance it. This philosopher thought that the Unitarians argued more mathematically than we do. But the most sanguine stickler for Arianism is the illustrious Dr. Clark. This man is rigidly virtuous, and of a mild disposition, is more fond of his tenets than desirous of propagating them, and absorbed so entirely in problems and calculations that he is a ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... been charitable, if the author had not pointed at personal characters in this Ballad of Charity. The Abbot of St. Godwin's at the time of the writing of this was Ralph de Bellomont, a great stickler for the Lancastrian family. ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... what you've been saying applies to Adair Easterday," he objected. "He wasn't a profiteer in khaki; he wasn't even in khaki. He made nothing; he lost nearly everything he had. Moreover, whatever faults he may have, he's always been a thorough-bred—a stickler for honor; the kind of chap who, if he had to sink, would go down with all his colors flying. Where his wife is concerned, he's ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... a bad-tempered little stickler to rules that don't mean a cuss. There isn't another train within a hundred miles or so, except west; there won't be ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... madam," objected the black sheep, whose name, by the way, was Stickler, "business does bring about much of the disaster that often appertains to wedded life, but mischief is sometimes done by other means, such, for ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... was around to see me at eight o'clock yesterday morning, or some such hour. He must have saddled at once. He's a stickler, is the Rector. 'Young Mr. Lambert,' says he, very formal, or some such words, 'I regret to say I must retract my permission that you should marry into my family, as doubtless you will wish to be released of your troth.' 'Hallo!' says I, a bit surprised, but knowing his crotchets: 'Why, what have ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thinking that it is a great shame that the general should not do anything for Mr. Mordaunt's wife, for she was his own flesh and blood; and I am sure he had no cause to be angry at her marrying a gentleman of such old family as Mr. Mordaunt. I am a great stickler for birth, sir; I learned that from the late Lady W. 'Brown,' she said, and I shall never forget her ladyship's air when she did say it, 'Brown, respect your superiors, and never fall into the hands of ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to civilization. At first, of course, they had a bad time with him; they couldn't talk to him, and when, quite naturally and nonchalantly he would start in to do the most outrageous things, they had to teach him better, literally by force. If Pedder weren't such an old stickler for propriety, I could go more into detail. You needn't look offended, Ped, you know you are very easily shocked, and that you make it unpleasant for everybody. He was taken on by the English consul at Teerak, who was ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... imagination had been a good deal excited by the prospect of a new brother, was a little disappointed. In her own private mind, she thought she should prefer for a brother a certain Oberlin student, with whom she had danced the last Thanksgiving evening. Bessie, always a stickler for propriety, ventured to say to her mother that she hoped he would learn to use his knife and fork, like other people. But to older members of the family, who distinctly remembered Willie in his boyhood, these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... such intense ignorance of the science of golf as Joel March, there was a perceptible difference in the style of the two competitors. Outfield West was a great stickler for form, and imitated the full St. Andrews swing to the best of his ability. In addressing the ball he stood as squarely to it as was possible, without the use of a measuring tape, and drove off ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... am sure he will agree with me. Now, Lady Dundas, if you please! I know your ladyship is a great stickler for precedence." ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... ranking army officer at Chihuahua, and, after a sharp preliminary examination, was committed to prison. The impression that O'Connor got of Carlo was not a reassuring one. The man was a military despot, apparently, and a stickler for discipline. He had a hanging face, and, in the Yaqui war, had won the nickname of "the butcher" for his merciless treatment of captured natives. If Bucky were to get the same short shrift as they did—and he began to suspect as much when his ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... Semple say that Van Heemskirk is a great stickler for trade, and that he hates every ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... Salemina dryly; "or at least the state in which it comes back is marvellous. I am not a stickler for dates, as you know, but if you could only contrive to fix a few periods in your minds, girls, just in a general way, you would not be so shamefully befogged. Your Anne of Denmark, Francesca, was the wife of James VI. of Scotland, who was James I. of ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... were no troubles between the Governor and people in the time of Governor Johnston's administration. Sometimes Edward Moseley, always a stickler for the rights of the colonists, would carry some dispute into the General Assembly, but the measures of Governor Johnston, as a general thing, were pleasing to all classes of the people ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... said to me once: Take my word for it, there are only four true salmo; the salar, the trutta, the fario, the ferox; all the rest are just varieties, subgenuses of the above; stick to that. Some writing fellow divided all the women into good-uns and bad-uns. But as a conscientious stickler for truth, I must say that both in trout as in women, I have found myself faced with most puzzling varieties, that were a tantalizing blending of several qualities. I then resolved to study them on my own account. I pursued the Eternal Feminine in a spirit of purely scientific investigation. ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... satisfaction with which that close-knit group of friends seized upon an outsider as the probable murderer of that other outsider whom they had rashly taken into their sacred circle. Even Penny Crain, thorny little stickler for fair play that she was, relaxed with ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... for contempt, nor is it necessary or customary for counsel to appear before him in robes. Some judges object to fancy waistcoats in Chambers, but others do not. The late Sir James Bacon, who was a great stickler for forensic propriety, and who, sitting in court, would not have allowed a counsel in a white waistcoat to say a word, habitually wore one himself when sitting as ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... martial law; iron heel, iron rule, iron hand, iron sway; tight grasp; brute force, brute strength; coercion &c 744; strong hand, tight hand. hard lines, hard measure; tender mercies [Iron.]; sharp practice; pipe-clay, officialism. tyrant, disciplinarian, precisian^, martinet, stickler, bashaw^, despot, hard master, Draco, oppressor, inquisitor, extortioner, harpy, vulture; accipitres^, birds of prey, raptorials^, raptors^. V. be severe &c adj.. assume, usurp, arrogate, take liberties; domineer, bully &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... product as he was of a regime that worshipped no ideals but its own; hide-bound by the traditions of his ancestry; holding in secret disdain men and women who could not boast of equal wealth and lineage; dictatorial, uncontradictable; stickler for obsolete forms and ceremonies—there still lay deep under the crust of his pride the heart of a father, and, by his standards, the soul ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... father on this one occasion thought the voice of the people was right. After the bill had been carried half through, it was given up by ministry, the opposition to it proving so violent. My father was a great stickler for parliamentary consistency, and moreover he was of an obstinate temper. Ten years could make no change in his opinions, as he was proud to declare. There was at this time, during a recess of parliament, some intention among the London merchants to send addresses to government ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... brought to bear upon it, TOM'S eyes, roving around from window to door, happen to light on a beautiful sucking-pig, that reposes in all the innocent beauty of baby pighood before the open door of a zealous stickler for human rights. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... much satisfaction at his new acquisition. He was no stickler for conventionalities, and did not in the least object to appear at his destination—where he knew no one—with a baby and ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... declared Pop Snooks, "is that their uniforms aren't like those of the days of sixty-three." Pop was a stickler for dramatic correctness. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope |
